


Finding Mother-Love

by RedEris



Series: Dragon Age Character contemplations [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Motherhood, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 21:45:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedEris/pseuds/RedEris
Summary: A discussion on Morrigan and the process of falling in love with her child





	Finding Mother-Love

**Author's Note:**

> This was written on Tumblr, first as a post, and then as additional comments in response to TheBearMuse. Eternal thanks to her for prompting a work many have appreciated.

Can I just take a minute to talk about how important Morrigan and Kieran are to me? That in this game there exists a child who is wise and strange and childish and complex even in his few small moments. That there exists a mother whose character does not revolve around her motherhood, whose story is still being told, who is still at the center of big events. Think for a moment about how vanishingly rare that is. She’s a mother, and yet that isn’t what her story is about at all. She’s difficult, she’s flawed, she’s frankly kind of an asshole still. She loves and craves knowledge. She’s a work in progress, but we’re never invited to question her fitness as a mother because of it. She’s shown as a loving, concerned, strict mother, a woman who would sacrifice everything for her child in a heartbeat, without ever seeming to subsume her life to his needs.

That’s….rarer than gems in the Korcari Wilds, and very precious to me.

[At this point, TheBearMuse reblogged the first part, with these notes: #and the best part is that she had initially seen him only as the means to an end#but that changed after he was born#was it instantaneous i wonder#i suspect it was. I responded as follows.]

Honestly? This is very personal, but I like to think that it wasn’t. There’s a great deal built up about how a mother’s love is instant and helpless, but it doesn’t always work that way and I’d love to see that acknowledged more.

I like to imagine that at first she saw him as a means to an end, a duty, but of course we know not a product of any actual desire on her part to have a child. And so she built up walls, resented the changes to her body, the discomfort and weakness, on the run and so very alone. And at first, he was just this tiny red stranger who seemed to do nothing but scream and eat, eat, eat, who made no sense–wouldn’t calm when he was held, wouldn’t sleep when he was tired, utterly irrational and frequently gross. And she gritted her teeth and swore that if she was going to do something, she would do it right. Better than the mother she had known. 

And so she learned to arrange his floppy, uncooperative little body in the sling, learned the right twist to make the damn diapers stay in place, did her duty, and nursed, and nursed, and nursed, and nursed, (nursed when she needed to eat, nursed even though she was always thirsty as soon as she started, nursed when she needed to pee, nursed as twilight fell and camp was still unmade…) staring down at this tiny stranger who wanted nothing but her with feelings she didn’t really understand at all, too many feelings to untangle.

Maybe it was the first social smile–maybe she picked him up, and he beamed at her just for being her. Maybe it was the first time she made a face at him, and he made it back. Maybe it was that first month when he began to be able to pull himself around, working SO HARD to crawl, so driven–to grow, to do, to learn.

And then she looked at him, and realized that she loved him desperately.


End file.
